What I learned about digital marketing from a sappy political Netflix documentary

I just finished watching a Netflix documentary that followed a group of Americans throughout the course of election day, 2016.

I like to talk about politics, but I am not into politics if you know what I mean.

So this documentary sort of chronicles a motley crew from a diverse gamut of political affiliations, interviewing them while filming their most prosaic daily routines from afar.

However, there was one scene that I found insightful. Especially so given the relevance I believe it bears on my career as a digital marketer.

The camera was on a lower-middle-class family. There were two women and one man sitting around the table doing their thing. A father, a wife and a daughter.

The father of the family, a big guy with a scratched voice, was arguing that if Trump won the Presidency, minorities would be forgotten about. His wife and daughter were arguing that if Hillary won they would lose their jobs.

It went back and forth like that.

They all agreed that they'd miss Obama something awful.

Except that the wife said, “I don’t think we’re better off after Obama than we were before.”

The husband began to argue with his wife. He crossed his arms and said, “Nah, look around us. We’re much better off now than we ever were before”.

“You’re wrong! Look at the statistics … the numb-”

"No, don't throw numbers at me. I will throw them back," the man said.

"Take for example this statistical report published by -"

She was interrupted by their daughter who had been the quietest of the three.

“Forget the statistics. Look around you”, she said to her father.

The father stopped throwing words back and forth with his wife.

He thought for a moment. He looked around and up and down and quietly admitted, “Maybe not … maybe not.”

Here’s the point, and it is not political (nothing in the above narrative is indicative of my political affiliations, and, let’s be honest, no one cares.)

I realized that this is where marketers tend to fail. The statistics argument wasn’t working for the father. It was only until he was told to forget the statistics for a minute and look around, did he reevaluate his position.

Take in your surrounding. 

Sense the ebb and flow of whatever dynamic is playing out right beneath the surface.

That was something that resonated with him. That was something that gave him a different perspective.

Statistics do not tell the entire story. They tell a story, but not necessarily the true story.

Statistics do not resonate with people, and they do not account for the extraordinarily unpredictable configurations of humankind.

With digital marketing, in particular, we have access to a literally bottomless well of data that is immeasurably useful, when used wisely. But the data and statistics we have access to can't be solely relied upon to inform our decisions and it shouldn't be used as an isolated information source.

Besides for concerns that the data themselves may be corrupted or inaccurate, the data themselves cannot feel the exhalation of a victory or the sinking despair of a defeat. Data cannot really tell the human side of the story, or predict what turn an industry or a business is likely going to take.

In marketing, it is easy and even simpler to keep our noses inside Google Analytics and whatever other marketing dashboards we are using to track the performance of our campaigns.

But how many times have the best analytics technicians failed to spot an industry heading south in a handbasket? How many times have account managers misreported revenue because they did not see the red flags that indicated their conversion tracking was set up incorrectly?

Many.

What separates good marketers from hobbyists is their ability to listen with their heart.

They can perceive how things interconnect with each other, and the good marketers are usually right.

Effective marketers can listen to a tone, and they can detect a subtle discordancy.

Successful marketers can listen to their clients, and they have a hypersensitive receptivity to all things fake and gimcrack.

They are accurate and insightful people first.

They are perfectly calibrated marvels of statistical analysis second.

Yes, you need to be exceptional in data analysis and statistical formulas. But you have to be even better at being perceptive and aware.

From personal experience, it is common to see enormous discrepancies in your marketing data compared to the story your client is telling.

AdWords or Google Analytics may be reporting enormous profits with dropping costs, when in fact the client’s business is plummeting.

When you rely solely on analytics to assess the profitability of marketing dollars you are likely spending on your client's behalf, you are risking a lot, because maybe:

• Conversion tracking is counting duplicate sales.
• You’re pulling static value when in fact customers are using coupon codes, and you’re not accounting for the credit card transaction fee.
• Your client’s sales team are a quack squad of delinquents and they cannot close a deal.
• You're reading the data wrong.
• There is a backend integration that’s broken.
• There’s more click fraud then you think.
• Customers are not signing up, registering, or actually paying at the rate that you think they are.
• Your missing outside variables that threaten the validity of your analysis.
• And many more issues.

Needless to say, if you do not understand the business that you’re marketing, if you are not perceptive and aware, then you certainly can’t advertise as well as you probably could be.

If you cannot listen, hear, sense, perceive and feel outside the intransigent browser plane of an analytics dashboard, then you are not worth your weight as a digital marketer.

True, if you cannot analyze that data, you’re also not worth your weight as a digital marketer (but that is not my point).

Practice peeling away from Google Analytics an hour or two a day, and spend that time talking to your clients, researching their industry and closing your eyes, letting your brain process the information organically.

You will see that your data analysis will become richer, more intelligent, and most importantly, more accurate.